Don’t get ripped off by your body shop

It seems like every couple of days I see something like this:

A prototype of an unreleased model? No, a bad repair job.

This is a Lexus RX 400h, a relatively recent and high end hybrid SUV, which has clearly been rear ended and repaired because the badges have been incorrectly applied by the body shop. The badge should read “RX 400h”, instead of “400h RX”. This happens more often than you’d think, and is a sign of poor attention to detail. This hapless Lexus driver paid real money to rewrite their car’s history, only to have a poor repair job signal to the world that this car has been wrecked.

This is a particularly egregious example, but I’ve seen more subtle but telltale reminders of repaired rear ends, like badges applied to the wrong side of the car, poorly aligned badges, and even the wrong model designation. If you ever get rear ended, make sure you have pictures of the badges before the accident, or do a Google Image Search to find the official photography showing the exact badge placement. If the car comes back with the badges in the wrong place, make the body shop fix the problem- it’s a simple matter for them to move things around.

You or your insurance company paid good money to get your car repaired properly, and a poor badge job just makes baby Nick cry.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012 at 1:52 pm and is filed under cars.
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